Emerging technologies are quickly gaining momentum in the field of virtual K-12 instruction. In this course, we will explore how the latest trends in the use of technology affect student learning and engagement. What innovative learning spaces and tools are available to instructors? How can instructors best utilize free and open resources to more deeply engage students in their learning? What impact can the use of emerging technologies have on student retention and performance? We will discuss the possibilities and challenges of using technology in fully online environments, although many of the ideas can be applied to blended and traditional environments as well. Learners will compare and contrast tools for use in K-12 virtual instruction, as well as examine best practices for implementing and managing these tools.
Upon completing this course, you will be able to:
1. Understand the role of technology in the distribution of content, the facilitation of collaborative activities, and the assessment of students, courses, and organizations.
2. Identify and evaluate existing and emerging technologies for their value in virtual course instruction and curriculum development.
3. Design and assess a learning activity that utilizes social learning tools.
4. Design and assess a learning activity or curricular program that uses game-based strategies and/or badges to deepen student engagement in virtual courses.
5. Research, critically evaluate, and employ open content in virtual education.
6. Debate the role of MOOCs in virtual K-12 education.

Ministrado por

Melissa Joell Loble, M.A., MBA

Instructor

Transcrição

Welcome to Module 4, MOOCs. In this lesson, we're going to talk about how MOOCs have emerged in the K-12 virtual education space and how you might want to possibly use MOOCs in your virtual K-12 teaching. Now, the original MOOC, you may not know this, although you're all participants of MOOCs. The original MOOC, or what's deemed as the original MOOC came out in 2008 as a cMOOC, or Collaborative MOOC. And this was really a course that all of the students contributed the content and the learning experiences. And the instructors facilitated that experience. It wasn't what we think of as a traditional MOOC, as many of you have experienced in your own learning, or even a traditional course. Well this concept of this crowdsourcing education or learning evolved. And now we have a whole host of MOOC providers, major providers or a lot of independent providers that are offering free or for low cost courses, to anybody in the public if it wants to take them. You have providers like Udacity and Canvas Network. Udacity focuses specifically on computer sciences and industry-related and sponsored content in the sciences. There's lots of great programming classes there. Canvas Network, this is the MOOC platform that I run. Focuses on a variety of different courses, many of which are more oriented towards personal interest. Although in the last couple of months, we have introduced more K-12 MOOCs and have encouraged more developers of K-12 MOOCs. For students to actually use in their high school courses generally, as supporting curriculum. You've got Khan Academy, in many ways people can think of the Khan Academy as a MOOC. It's, it's about interaction and great videos and great content and instruction for key concepts. But there's also ways to get tu, tutoring, and discussions, to do some other more MOOC like things, around the content in the Khan Academy. If you've never checked out the content in the Khan Academy, I highly encourage you to do go do that. Particularly because there are some great independent lessons that you can repurpose very easily in your classes. You have Coursera, which you're all participating in now. And Coursera has a whole variety of courses, specializations and programs now that allow people to do everything from engage in just a, a, a personal interest course to get complete certificates and do capstone projects. There's edX, edX also has quite a few K-12 courses. They focus a lot of their MOOC work around research and like to do a lot of learning research in their courses, but they have some top institutions offering courses and have also released K-12 initiatives and courses for teachers to use in their classes. And then finally, you have FutureLearn. Came out of the Open University in the UK, and has really emerged as a primary MOOC provider in Europe and even around the world, with some great content from some partners like BBC, and others. Now what really is a MOOC? Or what does MOOC stand for? So MOOC the m is massive. Now that's debatably because what really is massive? But the idea is that's it's bigger than one or it's bigger than ten. You can have courses anywhere from 50 people to 50,000 people or 100,000 people. In fact one of the largest MOOCs to date was run by Eudacity. It's a self paced MOOC where you work through it at your own pace, and I think they've had over 300,000 people participate in that MOOC since it launched. The second letter O is open. The idea in MOOCs is that they are open to anybody or accessible for anybody. It's breaking down the barriers to get into high quality education. Or at least that was the thinking. Now people have turned the open around though and created massive courses but limited those, the people that can access them. So not all MOOCs are really, truly open but the MOOC itself, the concept itself is about having open courses. This third o, or the third letter, second o, is online. This one has hold, held true. I really haven't seen anybody try to debate the online nature of a MOOC. But it's about, once again, that access to anybody online. And then the C, the C is course. And so it's no longer about just a single learning object, but a MOOC is about not only providing the content, but providing the learning context around the course. So if you think about this course, certainly I've provided video content and some lessons, and I've provided resources. But then around that, we have discussions and synchronous sessions to debate the topics that we've chatted about. We've got ways to connect with experts and there's a flow to the course. There's a path or suggested approaches, either self-paced or week by week. So that you can learn and grow and develop and assess your learning through the quizzes and the final exam and even the peer assessment. As you're going. So that's what a MOOC is. You probably like I said you all are aware of that having participated in that. But the good news about MOOCs is they can be used in K-12. And in fact, in K-12 virtual learning that's hybrid or blended, they're great. Because what you can do is you can take a course and you can have students experience the content in the course but then contextualize it in your face-to-face setting. Or even in your virtual setting. So you can make that course real. Another great thing about it is, it can expose students to a diversity of thinking, a diversity of experts and a broader community. So even though you may not require students to participate in the discussions in a MOOC, you can certainly allow them to do that. And they can get exposed to people that think very differently, or people from all over the world. It's pretty exciting that MOOCs are so international that it really can expose students to different ways of thinking from their own home country, own home community, maybe even own home language. It gives you a lot more exposure. It gives students exposure and gives you exposure to content that you may not have had exposure to and the context around it. And it gives you access to experts in the field. It gives you access to a great litany of well curated resources. MOOCs, in and of themselves, with all the resources and suggested readings are great ways to get good ideas for supplemental activities, readings, resources, that you may want to have students use in your own class. And they encourage engagement. Some of the challenges with using MOOCs is that they do tend to have a higher education focus. The, the traditional MOOC was born out of higher education. Some platforms, like I said Canvas Network is one of them, edX is another, have specifically focused on K-12 initiatives. I think we'll see more and more. We're seeing a lot more in the US at least grants in K-12 education require MOOC creation or open educational resource creation as part of that grant. So this idea of getting into the hands MOOCs in K, getting into the hands of virtual K-12 educators MOOCs is out there and people want it. Just a matter of getting the content and getting the momentum going. One of the challenges also is there are very public forums, and you can't control for students participating in them, if you have them enroll in MOOCs themselves. In some cases you can reach out to MOOC providers and ask them if you can repurpose some of their content. Or even repurpose their course, if you reach out to that individual instructor. So that you can house the course in your own space if you need to. But if you use just the standard MOOC providers, and the MOOC spaces, students are going to be exposed to public forums. And students will need to find ways to independently motivate themselves. It's independent learning your responsible for working through the course and completing your activities. So you may now need to build on ways to do that with your students or to get them to understand how to do that for themselves. We also have some challenges around quality some of the MOOCs they're still varying quality in the MOOCs some are good some are bad. And for different reasons. They all have the right intention, and there's all probably good in and of, in, in the, in the initial content themselves in the MOOCs. But it may just not be as appropriate to your audience. And there's still questions around accreditation. So can you actually give students credit associated with those MOOCs? And can they actually, is the certificate worth anything? I have heard, though, quite a few students talk about. In some various blog posts and some interviews I've done with students, talk about how they've included MOOC certificates on their college applications at least in the US. As a way to show they're willing to be proactive about their learning, their interested in particular areas, and they're willing to build their skills beyond what they got in just their high school experience. So, it's interesting to see where that will evolve. Now, a couple strategies for using MOOCs successfully. First and foremost I do encourage you to think about creating blended opportunities. I think that's important because you're going to want to contextualize some of that learning, a MOOC might be too generic or too specific to be related exactly the way you want it to in your course. So contextualize it at some level, could be a very complex contextualization or just something as very simple as do these activities and it'll connect in this way. Definitely provide some context and structure and align assessments. Assess students work you don't have to use the MOOC assessments you can use your own assessments to assess their work and the MOOC. And then also use them to develop your own professional careers. Probably the most, created MOOC topic. Is helping K-12 educators teach students. I think if you went across all the platforms, you'll see more K-12 teaching MOOCs than anything else for teachers. And some of them are great, some of them are applicable to you, some of them may not be, but definitely take a look at them and see how they can help you personally grow professionally, just like you're doing in this MOOC. So I often get asked, as a real quick last statement. How do I create a MOOC? I'm interested in doing a MOOC. What, what makes a good MOOC? And how would I create one? Well a couple of caveats, or a couple of warnings, as you're thinking about creating a MOOC, and then a couple of strategies for success. First of all, know it takes a lot of time to create a MOOC. It really does. And you can't do it yourself completely. You need to have somebody at the very least edit your work, or review your work. But you probably also need somebody to help you film, if you're going to have video in your MOOC. You need somebody to help you create the right kinds of interactions. If you're going to do some more complex, you know, technology interactions or simulations or games. You might need somebody to help you just even think about how to generalize your topic enough to reach out to a broad audience. So know you're probably going to need help. Most likely some institutional or some organizational help. And that most MOOC providers require an instructor to be supported by their institution. So, know that you probably will need your school or your district to back you in the creation of a MOOC. It's going to include diverse media which is a great move. You want it to have diverse media, but be prepared to create it or find it, and be prepared to have it generally remain free. There have been four cost MOOCs that have been experimented with and piloted, but they don't get a massive audience yet. That's okay. If you want a massive audience, I encourage you to go free. But if you don't want a massive audience, you can charge for your course in some of the platforms that you do that. Or you could at the very least charge for a certificate or something of that nature. Once again, that would be a part of the institutional arrangement that your school or district would have with the provider. Finally, be prepared that you're going to address a broad audience and you will never satisfy everybody. You're going to get people, just like in this MOOC, you're going to get people that aren't your target audience, but still really want to learn about that topic. Well they may walk away with just one thing, that's okay. Or they may not walk away with anything but that's okay. They experience that, and that's what they wanted to do. And feel comfortable with that, because you are going to get such a diverse audience, and everybody's going to have different expectations coming into the MOOC. That you are going to have people that love what you did. And then you're going to have people who just weren't satisfied. It's, it's, it's the reality. Of course, you want to try to create the best MOOC possible. But be comfortable with knowing that you've served a good core group of people. And that you've probably served the rest of the people that have taken your MOOC in very anecdotal ways that's still impactful but may not be in the same way as your core group. So let's take a moment just to reflect on what we've chatted about in MOOCs. Let's say your school is encouraging your teachers particular your virtual teachers to use MOOCs in virtual education. And particularly you're a math teacher and you want to help motivate students to actually do and complete a MOOC. What might you do or how might you incorporate it in your normal teaching or your normal lessons, your virtual experience, that encourages or promotes students to actually work through the MOOC as you wish them to?